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6 Website Annoyances Your Customers Hate

If you want to keep your website visitors happy, you must thoroughly plan your site’s every little detail. Even the greatest webmasters make the mistake of annoying users. Avoid the following six website annoyances and learn why they’re detrimental to the success of your website.

With this knowledge, you will keep people on your site longer, provide a better user experience and subsequently increase sales.

1. Disorienting Elements

Nothing annoys Web browsers more than frustrations that get in the way of the site’s purpose. If something confuses or distracts viewers, they will leave your site. The following factors can divert users and negatively affect their opinion of your business:

Animations – The blink test translates to a couple seconds to grab users’ attention before they click away from your site. Don’t distract them with animations or other media that automatically plays when they enter your site.

Slow load times – Every second matters in Internet marketing, which means you can’t afford a slow load time. Check your load times with tools such as WebPageTest, Pingdom and Google’s PageSpeed Tools.

Poor navigation – A site’s navigation is the gateway to the user experience. Consider adding a knowledge center to your website that will house important resources.

2. Generic Stock Photos

Run-of-the-mill images on your website are just as bad (if not worse) as not using any images at all. Opt for authentic images, such as photos of real customers and employees. Visitors appreciate getting a genuine feel for your business, and using meaningful images helps them do so.

3. A Basic About Us Page

Your About Us page is a chance to separate yourself from your competition. Use this chance wisely by opting for something original. Regurgitated information and overused buzz words aren’t going to separate you from the many other businesses out there.

Say something original about your business, and say it in a way that hasn’t been overdone.

4. SEO-Driven or Unauthoritative Copy

Keyword-stuffed copy is detrimental to your website. If the search engines don’t penalize you, visitors to your website will surely notice. In today’s world of Internet marketing, authoritative and quality content is rewarded.

On the same note, be sure to use attractive titles and headers. Your content should follow through with those titles, as well. Irrelevant or misplaced information will cause visitors to leave your site – and your credibility could be tarnished.

5. Missing Elements

Many websites forget to make their blog easy to find, or worse yet, they don’t have an active blog. The absence of a blog is a mistake. Users appreciate an active blog because it shows your brand is current, thoughtful and established.

Social sharing buttons are also helpful for your website viewers because they’re simple, making the process of sharing content from your website as easy as possible. If it’s easy for your website visitors to share information, they will be more likely to promote your business.

6. Bad Linking Strategies

Too many links is distracting to readers and takes away from their comprehension and overall experience with your website. Overdone linking can cause the copy to become unreadable.

Furthermore, shoddy linking strategies – such as anchoring strange phrases – can be confusing and misleading. Be sure hyperlinks are well-thought strategies that offer further reading and relevant information.

How to Help Users Enjoy Your Site

To combat annoying your website readers, consider the following ways to make their experience enjoyable (and profitable for you):

Consider users’ questions. Before anything else, explore your site through the potential visitors’ viewpoint. What questions might they have? Answer them as soon as possible.

Avoid intrusive questions. Don’t smother users with invasive questions. This tends to come off as pushy and insensitive.

Include accepted methods of payment. Visitors like to know how they can pay before it’s time to pay. Make this information known early and clearly.

Aim for ease. Add the phone number in the header, in a large font size. Users shouldn’t have to work to find your contact information.

Be logical. Thoroughly think things through before making a decision about your website. Where you place elements on your site is an important concern. This include social sharing buttons and links to other parts of your website.

Create attractive error messages. This simple touch that can keep visitors on your site even when they’re faced with an error. Ugly error pages repel readers, so remember to always opt for something clever and attractive.

Now is the perfect time to rethink your website. Is there anything you could change? Your success with Internet marketing is all about the users’ experience. Avoid annoying them and you’re one step closer to converting your site visitors to leads.

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About Kayla Matthews

Kayla Matthews is a business solutions blogger, workplace productivity guru and lead nurturing fanatic. Follow her on Google+ and Twitter, or check out her blog Productivity Theory for more of her latest posts!

One Response to 6 Website Annoyances Your Customers Hate

My mega-annoyance is the use of grey instead of black text. It seems to be a recent (well, last year or so) trend and I tend to quickly click out when I have to work so hard to read text. It should be easy to read quickly. There is grey text on this web page.
Coiuld it be my computer or browser preferences? Or is it a design trend?
Thank you.

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